The present invention relates to surfacing alloy compositions. More particularly, the present invention relates to hard corrosion resistant surfacing alloys useful in manufacture and repair of wear surfaces of parts used in extremely harsh environments, such as glass mould parts used in the glass making industry.
With costs of raw materials continually rising, there has been increasing emphasis in increasing the longevity of parts prone to wear. This increase in longevity has been successfully accomplished in the past through the use of surfacing alloys to provide increasingly wear resistant parts and also to allow repair of worn surfaces, where cost effective, rather than replace worn parts. Surfacing alloys have been utilized with great success to cost effectively rebuild wear surfaces on parts and to provide superior wear and corrosion resistant surfaces on cheaper base alloys for new parts.
Surfacing alloys have found particularly favorable use in the glass moulding industry, because of the high temperature corrosive environment and cost conscious production requirements. Thus, surfacing alloys such as Colmonoy.RTM. Nos. 4,5,6,21,22,23,24,43,72 and Wallex.RTM. Nos. 40 and 50 available through Wall Colmonoy of Madison Heights, Michigan, have found useful applications under these conditions. While these and other surfacing alloys have found much success in many applications, the increasing competitiveness in the glass industry has presented new challenges for formulating new surfacing alloys with improved wearability and workability.
Nickel-boron-silicon alloys have seen some favorable consideration for use as surfacing alloys. While nickel, silicon and boron alloys have been recognized as being extremely hard and having high temperature corrosion resistance, these alloys have certain drawbacks. Such alloys are extremely hard and thus are somewhat incompatible with normal machining used in manufacture and repair of such parts. Another drawback of such alloys was the formation of boro silicate glass products during application of the alloy. Boro silicate formation is undesirable in a surfacing alloy composition. Additionally, the appearance of such alloys was unsightly. Thus, this has also been a problem for commercialization of such an alloy. Because of these problems such alloys have not found entirely favorable use as surfacing alloys.